Digital Materialities: Design and Anthropology

Description

As the distinction between the digital and the material world becomes increasingly blurred, the ways in which we think about design are also shifting and evolving. How can the human, digital and material be brought together to intervene in the world? What constitutes our digital-material environments? How can we engage with digital technologies to make sustainable, healthy and meaningful decisions, both now and in the future? Digital Materialities presents twelve chapters by scholars and practitioners working at the intersection between design and digital research in the UK, Spain, Australia and the USA. By incorporating in-depth understandings of the digital-material world from both the social sciences and design, the book considers how this combined knowledge might advance our capacity to design for the future. Divided into three parts, the focus of the book moves from the theoretical to the practical: how different digital materialities are imagined and emerge, through software emulation, urban sensors and smart homes; how new digital designs are sparked through collaborations between social scientists and designers; and finally, how digital design emerges from the insider work of everyday designers. A fascinating, ground-breaking book for students and scholars of digital anthropology, media and communication, and anyone interested in the future of digital design.

Sarah Pink is Professor of Design and Media Ethnography at RMIT University, Australia.Elisenda Ardevol is Senior Lecturer of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies at the Open University of Catalonia, Spain.Debora Lanzeni is Researcher at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute at the Open University of Catalonia, Spain.

The essays in this volume make the case for the undeniable hybridity of human experience and suggest further avenues for researching the forms that material/digital interactions take and how individuals, families, communities, and societies (co-)design digital materialities, often in unanticipated ways that diverge from the expectations and intentions of professional designers. - Anthropology Review Database - Jack David Eller